ABSTRACT
A considerable share of South Africa's tuberculosis burden affects those people who have previously been treated for tuberculosis - many of them successfully. In a retrospective cohort study that was conducted using tuberculosis treatment register data from two communities in suburban Cape Town; it was found that the hazard rate of re-treatment for smear-positive tuberculosis was between 3- and 5.26-times higher in tuberculosis cases who had defaulted from treatment compared to successfully treated cases. But although the rate of re-treatment was substantially higher among defaulters; cases after treatment success account for the vast majority of smear-positive re-treatment cases due to the fact that far more tuberculosis cases were successfully treated than had defaulted